Booorrriiinnnnnnggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !

Hi, Folks.
I don't have Randy's eat time in graders only but I suspect I beat him in total seat time in all machines run. I've had about 10 years total in graders out of 43 1/2 years full time so far and I have found very little if any of it boring. Graders particularly are an interesting bit of gear to run 'cos more often than not, you are leaving finished product behind you. I'd suggest that if you are ever finding any operating boring, you may need to look at the quality of the work you are leaving behind you and/or your attitude.

Also, graders tend to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and Mr Fixit combined around earthworks, quite often being called on to fix some stuff-up somewhere. They often get a bit more overtime too, cleaning up and/or weather-proofing the job. It is also not uncommon for the graders to be first ones out after rain, drying out the haul roads and the fill areas.

The art of grader operation is being able to set your blade and your machine to take the material from where it needs to be taken to where it needs to be placed in the condition it needs to be in at placement in the least number of passes. The same pretty much applies to any earthmoving machine but it is paramount with graders.

Graders particularly are an interesting bit of gear to run 'cos more often than not, you are leaving finished product behind you. I'd suggest that if you are ever finding any operating boring, you may need to look at the quality of the work you are leaving behind you and/or your attitude.

No, the guy on the roller, that follows the grader, is leaving the finished product. And I defy you to tell me that that's not boring.

Proudly spending today building the dilapidated housing of the 22nd century....

Rollers are NOT boring.

Hi, Digger242J.
Again, it's your attitude that governs whether the job is boring or not. You can have a LOT of FUN with a roller, especially a smooth-drum following a grader. With a little knowledge and undertsanding, you can annoy the hell out of the grader operator by rolling his crown sideways. You can even do it to opposites sides in alternate sections so that the crown has a 'staggered' appearance. This will usually cause steam to issue from the grader operator's favourite ears, giving the grader the appearance of being steam-powered. Then you take photos of the said steam-powered grader and post them here on HEF.

Another little trick for a roller operator is to get right up behind the grader as he is finishing his pass. He throws the grader into reverse and begins backing up, only to run smack into the front of the roller. That usually gets their attention focussed on where they are going when reversing, which makes for improved safety on the job. It may also make for a steam-powered grader and more photos on HEF.

Or, you can roll his dumped road base or fill BEFORE he gets to spread it. This will often cause the grader operator to make like a demented windmill with copious quantities of unprintable verbage directed towards the offending roller operator. Rolling the windrows is usually good for a blast too.

Hey, Grader4me, Randy and Northart, how am I doing so far? LOL.

Mind you, it has been said before and may well be said again that smooth-drum rollers are only kept on the job to fix grader operator's mistakes. LOL.

Very Well Spoken

Deas

Only personal experience could write that kind of statement with such color and flavor. I knew an old blademan that all his roller hands referred to him as the "The Windmill"! Your comments brought back some memories of him.

On a serious note though, a good roller hand will make or break ya. I have been blessed with some great ones and I’ve had some that really caused me to blow a gasket. My favorite trick is when they leave the vibe on and change directions. This generally results in something, which resembles a thermo nuclear detonation inside the grader cab then followed by a large mushroom cloud.

I sometimes tape derogatory signs to the ripper for my roller hands to read; just to get a good laugh.

I have told many young guys that want to learn how to operate a motor grader, go run roller behind a good blademan, watch how he does thinks. See how he manages his material, how he uses the water truck, how he directs and manages the roller. That’s how I got started; rolling behind my Dad. My dad always got great checkups at the dentist since he flossed his teeth with my rear-end hairs on a regular basis. When I screwed up his grade, Oh man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Best lessons I ever learned. My father is now 72, still in excellent shape and when I can keep up with him on a grader I will finally feel I have mastered it, but I guaranty that won’t be happening anytime soon.

I have met many a man who tell me there the greatest on one these things, but I have only seen a few that really impress me.

Doin great Deas! Great Story. I tell the roller operator to stay to heck out of my way and I'll tell him when to roll when I'm levelling and fine grading.
Spreading asphalt I've had a few times when I've cursed the roller operator. Making that final pass along the edge of the road, asphalt rolling off the moldboard in a nice flow, keeping the grader as straight as an arrow making that perfect straight edge, looking as though it was done with a asphalt spreader. Look in the mirror at your beautiful job and then to your utter horror here comes the roller guy weaving in and out on the edge of the hot asphalt, making my perfect straight line looking like it was spread by a drunk

Oh yes, I remember now, the roller guy... Hey Mario from Cookes in Vic ... you would run up on the freshly dumped heaps of clay the tippers had just put there with the vibrating padfoot and tighten them all up before I could spread them with the blade and laughing like hell. You knew it annoyed me, but hey you were a good workmate and I enjoyed your company, hope alls good with you.

I haven't done much rolling following a grader, but I have done some compaction on dirt jobs. One particular one I remember was compacting fill inside an old building foundation. I was literally falling asleep, but when the machine bumped into the wall at either end, it would wake me up, at least long enough to change direction.

Proudly spending today building the dilapidated housing of the 22nd century....

I haven't done much rolling following a grader, but I have done some compaction on dirt jobs. One particular one I remember was compacting fill inside an old building foundation. I was literally falling asleep, but when the machine bumped into the wall at either end, it would wake me up, at least long enough to change direction.

Find me a guy that can stay awake for a 12 hour shift on a smooth drum roller, and ill find a job for him somewhere. The only thing worse than running a smooth drum is running it in -10 deg temps

Not The Victim _ Just The Spectator

Hi, Randy.
Fortunately, I have never been the 'victim' of the antics described above. Not one of the roller operators that I ever worked with did any of those things to me but I have seen them done a time or two to other grader operators. I got into the habit very early in my grader operating career of having a little chat with my roller operator(s) BEFORE they did any of the above.

I had the benefit of somebody else's experience before I actually had to do it myself. The guy who gave me my only anything-like-formal instruction on a grader, a whole 1 hour's worth, told me about those sorts of 'tricks' and made the suggestion about the above appraoch to dealing with the problem. He also mentioned that graders have seats for the specific purpose of having bums parked in them. I was a good pupil - largely 'cos I am too lazy to stand up and I don't like doing things twice. LOL.

I'd never claim to be in your class as a grader operator and I suspect that one or two others on this site may have a little more grader experience than I do too, including that 'old fossil' up there in Talkeetna. LOL. I have spent too little of my total operating career on graders to be one of the really good ones. How-wevver, I have done enough to know the basics and have left one or two 'experts' scratching their heads over the years. Like you, I have heard a lot 'experts' over the years and have not been hugely impressed in a favourable way by many of them when they have to strut their stuff.

'Expert' - an 'ex' is either a has-been or an unknown quantity and a 'spurt' is a drip under pressure.

Here is a little story from a book that I am writing in my spare(?) time:

"On this same job, we had a 30-ton hydraulic excavator, one of those machines with the long arm ‘thingy’ on the front that digs holes wherever people want holes dug (and sometimes where they don’t). This machine spent most of it time loading trucks with one sort of stuff or another, anything from rubbish to good clay fill. The operator of this machine, whom we’ll call Shane, was quite capable at his job although not one of the real top-liners. He had also spent enough time on several other machines, including graders, that he could also operate them reasonably well.

One day, Shane asked me if he could have a play on my grader for the last hour of the day while I ran his excavator. I agreed, we swapped and off he went. When I next saw him at knock-off time, without waiting for me to say anything, he came straight out and said, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” I asked, “What are you talking about?” He replied, “I’ve just been working my arse off on that grader. You look as if you just sit up there and let it happen.”

The above-mentioned grader was an old machine, an early Cat 14G, that didn’t have much in the way of brakes and had a few idiosyncrasies of its own but could still do a fair day’s work - IF you knew its tricks. I did.

This ‘appearance’ of ‘just sitting there and letting it happen’ or of ‘not seeming to be busy’ can often be the hallmark of a really good operator, some-one who knows exactly how to get the machine to do what he wants it to do and who does not get flustered when faced with a ticklish situation or a heavy workload. Such operators are usually very smooth, very accurate and very pretty to watch."

As a manufacturer we are seeing a shortage of operators. Just last week I actually a had a sale go cold because the owner lost his operator. Future plans for us are to develope a real motor grader training school where anyone can send their operators to learn basic and advanced grading techniques. My plan is to hire experienced grader experts to do the teaching. I just hope I can get my school launched before we run out of operators.